January 19, 2012

Project Life: Keeping it Low Key

Everyone and their Mother (though not my Mother -- and I did try to convince her) seems to be doing Project Life this year. And that is awesome because there's so much advice and chatter and all sorts of stuff going on online. It's also a little bit bad because I find myself getting a wee bit intimidated by the unbelievable amount of planning that some folks are doing. There are planning pages, notebooks, apps to keep track of your week, worksheets...I just can't face all of that. It makes Project Life seem like so much work. And I need it to be fun and easy.

I have chosen a Project Life method focused more on memory keeping and less on aesthetics. That's not to say I don't want my pages to look pretty, but I want to journal a lot and tell stories and if it ends up being pretty, that's awesome. If it doesn't, that's awesome too. Because my life isn't pretty. It's scattered and in motion and made up of little bits and pieces that aren't at all color coordinated. And shouldn't Project Life reflect my life?

I'm barely into the project, but I thought I'd share a few thoughts, with plans for sporadic updates throughout the year.

ONE: My Mother says that all Project Lifes (is that the plural? I don't think it's "Lives" in this case?) look the same. She's not wrong. No matter how individual you set out to make yours, if you're using the divided page protectors you've got the same look as everyone else. This doesn't bother me. After all, I'm just trying to tell my story.

TWO: I've been doing Project Life on Sunday and it takes me a few hours. They're pleasurable hours, but still hours. Not quite the ten-minutes-a-day-just-like-Art-Journal-Every-Day that I had imagined. But the biggest chunk of my time is devoted to printing photos. I have found that I have too many photos rather than too few. And they all need to be edited and resized and printed out.

THREE: I'm a little obsessed with Instagram right now. And I've kind of been thinking of my Project Life as an extension of my Instagram feed. After all, if it's worth taking a photo of and sharing with the world, it's probably worth putting in my album.

FOUR: I'm not planning on any consistent style or look to my album. Each week is starting to have a rhythm of its own because I do it all together with the same supplies. But I am using all of the different styles of the divided page protectors. Some with verticals...

...and some with horizontals.

I like the mixing and matching. It suits my style!

FIVE: I made up a bunch of journaling cards (some of which are for sale here) and I have them in my little loaf pan on my desk along with all my other junque.

If I feel like writing something down, I'll grab a card and write it down. (Revolutionary, I know!)

I have a plastic bag that I throw the card and any memorabilia for the week into. For the past two Sundays I've sat down with the bag to actually put the pages together. I've chucked only two of the completed journaling cards (the beauty of being able to print more, by the way), but for the most part all of those cards slide right into the divided page protectors.

Plus I've discovered that they're great for just sticking a photo on and stamping a few words.

Looks fab in no time at all!

SIX: I'm kind of loving using more than one pocket for a canvas. I tried it for the first time this last week and it made me happy.

It's just another example of my supplies not being the boss of me, but me being the boss of my supplies. I can use any size photo I want, I just have to cut it up to make it work. (Although, did you notice that the red arrow 3 photos up from here is actually on the outside of the page protector, becasue I didn't want to snip it in half and ruin the line.)

SEVEN: Don't forget that there are so many ways to record your daily life. I love this video:

Comments

Project Life: Keeping it Low Key

Everyone and their Mother (though not my Mother -- and I did try to convince her) seems to be doing Project Life this year. And that is awesome because there's so much advice and chatter and all sorts of stuff going on online. It's also a little bit bad because I find myself getting a wee bit intimidated by the unbelievable amount of planning that some folks are doing. There are planning pages, notebooks, apps to keep track of your week, worksheets...I just can't face all of that. It makes Project Life seem like so much work. And I need it to be fun and easy.

I have chosen a Project Life method focused more on memory keeping and less on aesthetics. That's not to say I don't want my pages to look pretty, but I want to journal a lot and tell stories and if it ends up being pretty, that's awesome. If it doesn't, that's awesome too. Because my life isn't pretty. It's scattered and in motion and made up of little bits and pieces that aren't at all color coordinated. And shouldn't Project Life reflect my life?

I'm barely into the project, but I thought I'd share a few thoughts, with plans for sporadic updates throughout the year.

ONE: My Mother says that all Project Lifes (is that the plural? I don't think it's "Lives" in this case?) look the same. She's not wrong. No matter how individual you set out to make yours, if you're using the divided page protectors you've got the same look as everyone else. This doesn't bother me. After all, I'm just trying to tell my story.

TWO: I've been doing Project Life on Sunday and it takes me a few hours. They're pleasurable hours, but still hours. Not quite the ten-minutes-a-day-just-like-Art-Journal-Every-Day that I had imagined. But the biggest chunk of my time is devoted to printing photos. I have found that I have too many photos rather than too few. And they all need to be edited and resized and printed out.

THREE: I'm a little obsessed with Instagram right now. And I've kind of been thinking of my Project Life as an extension of my Instagram feed. After all, if it's worth taking a photo of and sharing with the world, it's probably worth putting in my album.

FOUR: I'm not planning on any consistent style or look to my album. Each week is starting to have a rhythm of its own because I do it all together with the same supplies. But I am using all of the different styles of the divided page protectors. Some with verticals...

...and some with horizontals.

I like the mixing and matching. It suits my style!

FIVE: I made up a bunch of journaling cards (some of which are for sale here) and I have them in my little loaf pan on my desk along with all my other junque.

If I feel like writing something down, I'll grab a card and write it down. (Revolutionary, I know!)

I have a plastic bag that I throw the card and any memorabilia for the week into. For the past two Sundays I've sat down with the bag to actually put the pages together. I've chucked only two of the completed journaling cards (the beauty of being able to print more, by the way), but for the most part all of those cards slide right into the divided page protectors.

Plus I've discovered that they're great for just sticking a photo on and stamping a few words.

Looks fab in no time at all!

SIX: I'm kind of loving using more than one pocket for a canvas. I tried it for the first time this last week and it made me happy.

It's just another example of my supplies not being the boss of me, but me being the boss of my supplies. I can use any size photo I want, I just have to cut it up to make it work. (Although, did you notice that the red arrow 3 photos up from here is actually on the outside of the page protector, becasue I didn't want to snip it in half and ruin the line.)

SEVEN: Don't forget that there are so many ways to record your daily life. I love this video: